About American Express Gold Card (Canada Edition) What you should know

When many people hear about American Express, the first reaction was: Isn’t this should be something of United States? In fact, American Express can be understood as a card issuer, which has issued credit cards and charge cards in many countries around the world. As a close neighbor of the United States, Canada has various selection of American Express card.

Regarding
the American Express Gold Card, you should know the following information :

1. This
is a Charge Card. The biggest difference between a Credit Card and a charge
card is that there is no Pre-set spending limit for charge card. However, it
should be noted that the absence of Pre-set spending limit does not mean that
there is no Spending power, and you can check the online banking self-service
when you have the card.

In
general, unlike Visa/MasterCard, the consumption limit of the Charge Card is
automatically decreased with the increase of consumption on your card and the
accumulation of repayment history. You do not need to apply for a Pre- Approve
from the bank to get the amount. For those who consume a lot of money, there is
no doubt that the American Express card has obvious advantages.

2. This
card also has the lowest annual fee for the Membership Rewards (MR) in Canada
(the main card annual fee is $150). Express Points are currently the most
flexible and the most easy to use for all Canadian credit cards.

Aeroplan/Avios/Starwood is more commonly used in Canada. The best one is to exchange it directly to Aeroplan at 1:1 . In addition, there are other usages for Express Points, such as directly changing gift cards, changing items, and deducting Statement Balance, etc., for these usages, MR only has a value of 1.0~1.2 cents/points.

The card
is awarded 25,000 MR first opening. If you apply through a friend’s
recommendation, you can still get a 30,000 MR offer. The additional 5000 MR can
be get through opening the secondary card.

3, many
people ask the gold card’s return on consumption, and in the last part I have
talked about the value of points, so the rate of return is also based on this.
Ordinary consumption of $1 can get 1 MR (~1.9%), travel expenses (such as
airfare, fuel, hotel) or buy food, eat at a partner, get 2 MR (~3.8%) for every
$1, using Amex Travel for Travel is $1
for 3 MR (~5.7%). Therefore, the consumption return of this card (calculated by
self-use points) is at least 1.9%. If you spend a lot of money, it is easy to
break the average consumption return by 3%.

In
contrast, the high return card of the Visa Infinite series is TD/CIBC Aeroplan
Visa Infinite (about 2%), and the high return card of World Elite series is
Westjet RBC World Elite (1.5%~4%, with an average return of about 1.8%) and BMO
Air Miles World Elite (about 2% when used carefully). The cards mentioned above
have an annual fee of $120, which is $30 lower than the $150 of the gold card.
If you consider using this card as the main card, the first year of positive
income is certainly guaranteed , but in the long run, perhaps the gold card is
not the best choice for the main card.

4.
Insurance level, This card contains:several insurances that are important for
mid- to high-end credit cards.

 Travel delay insurance


Baggage loss insurance

 Travel (public) traffic accident insurance

 Out-of-provincial medical insurance

 Car rental insurance

 Purchase protection insurance

 Extended insurance

For travel delay (requires at least four hours delay), the payment is very fast.

5. Let me talk about the acceptance issue. This card is criticized because some supermarkets (such as Costco and Superstore) do not accept the card. In fact, the correct logic is: If you want to maximize the value of the card, it should be used as a travel card. As I mentioned before, each card has its own definite role.

6. The
application for this card basically has no threshold for income. Even students
with zero income can prove their purchasing power to obtain this card by
submitting their own bank account water bill. For approval, the difficulty of
applying this card should be the lowest in the card issued by Express Canada. A
large number of DPs shows that it is easy to apple with a good credit of about
6 months.

7. For those who like to watch concerts and participate in various activities, this card also has the attribute of Front of Line of Express Card, which can give priority to many tickets for the concert. So for those who often watch concerts, this card is a good deal.